The Melancholy of a Normal Girl
by Netherwood
Summary: Kyon never said those few fateful words and never gave Haruhi the idea to form the SOS Brigade. What does one do in a world without purpose? A meditation on the melancholy, hopefully with a bit of light at the end.
1. Half-Sick of Shadows

_Disclaimer: Haruhi Suzumiya and company do not belong to me. I'm just playing, and will put them back when I'm done._

* * *

**The Melancholy of a Normal Girl**

**by Netherwood**

**Part 1 - Half-Sick of Shadows**

* * *

Class time is when she disappears into herself. She leans onto her desk, puts her head into her arms, and… well, she doesn't sleep. But she doesn't do anything else, either. Apparently it's not a problem, or so the teachers have decided, because they never try to call on her. Perhaps they heard her reputation from East Junior High, so when she just lies down and dies in the back of their classroom every day, all they think is, "Thank god she isn't trying to rearrange the desks."

For now, the teacher is droning on about how to calculate molarity or something else I really don't care about. I suppose I pay about as much attention in class as Haruhi. In the slight pauses between teacher asking a question and student answering, I can hear Haruhi breathing and occasionally twitching—still awake. I shift toward the window, just enough to see her head rise out of her arms to watch me.

Our eyes catch. Haruhi, still slumped over and hair obscuring her face, blinks a few times. I give her a tiny smile. On her desk, one hand slides forward far enough to tap the back of my chair a few times. Then her head falls back into her arms.

We do this a few times every class, the only thing she does. I turn around, she hears me shifting and looks up, we watch each other for a moment, and she taps my chair before going back to her nothing. The fact that she's paying enough attention to catch me so much as twitching in my seat… no, that makes it sound too much like she's anxiously waiting for me. I have no idea what goes on in this girl's head. It could just be that in a room full of high school dullards, Haruhi can't be bothered by anything farther than arm's reach.

If she'd only started acting like this sooner, I never would have noticed her. No, that's not right. If she'd started acting like this sooner, I'd still notice her, but she would just be that girl in the back of the class who never looks up. But, because she waited, I met the real Haruhi, the one that can stand up on the first day of a new school year and announce that everyone mundane is simply not worth her time. And after she did that, she slowly fell apart before my eyes.

Behind me, Haruhi sighs into the desk. The voice of the teacher hums on, punctuated by the staccato ticks of the hands of the clock.

OoOoO

Lunch is when she shows the most energy. As far as school goes, anyway. Every day, as soon as the lunch bell rings, she stands up, slides her bento from her bag, and I follow her out the door. This little ritual of ours began… probably about a week after she started walking to lunch, instead of sprinting out the door and simply disappearing to who-knows-where.

Taniguchi and Kunikida, putting their desks together, say hello as I walk past them. Usually, something like, "Hey Kyon, don't wander too far, okay?" Taniguchi. "Have fun, Kyon." Kunikida. Neither of them says anything to Haruhi, though they both look at her. Taniguchi, with the sort of aversion reserved for the communicably ill, and Kunikida with the simple awkwardness of not knowing what to do, even though something clearly needs to be done. I can relate to that.

She doesn't so much as glance at them, naturally.

At first, I tried splitting my lunches between them and Haruhi; one day, I'd pull my desk up with them, and the other day I'd get up and follow Haruhi. Then, one lunch, I was already getting my chopsticks out when I realized she was hanging back a few steps from my desk instead of being already out the door, looking like she was actually having trouble opening her mouth for once.

How do you respond to that? We hadn't actually talked about our lunch arrangements at all. We just seemed to understand that I'd go with her half the time, and the guys half the time.

Well. That's what I thought, anyway.

I liked eating lunch with Kunikida and Taniguchi, surprisingly. It was normal. Relaxing, in a way Haruhi couldn't manage.

"Um, Haruhi… Do you want to eat with us?" I thought that was a decent compromise. Maybe I could get her talking to the other two for once.

But, she just got a look like she was going to punch someone. This was when Kunikida and Taniguchi finally clued in to Haruhi standing behind them and turned around to get an eyeful of her scowl. She crossed her arms and glared. "It's fine. You don't have to eat lunch with me. Do you whatever you want, Kyon, I'm fine by myself." So she stomped out the door and onto the grounds, and I'm pretty sure she deliberately picked a spot in the field where I could see her bristling back from the window.

All I could really think of was to apologize to Kunikida and Taniguchi and tell them Haruhi could use my company right now. Kunikida agreed, although he looked regretful; Taniguchi told me to send up an emergency flare if I wanted someone to come recover my corpse for proper funeral rites. They both seemed pretty relieved I didn't ask them to come with me, though. Somehow, my desire to eat lunch with them dropped off when I realized that.

So, now I eat with Haruhi every day.

Today, we find a quiet patch of grass in the courtyard and unload our lunches, sitting with the sides of our legs brushing. If I'm lucky, she'll have frustrations to work out. As unexpected as it was the first time it happened, that's probably the easiest way to help. Admittedly, it's not just for her benefit. Maybe Kunikida was right. Maybe I do have a thing for strange girls.

Unfortunately, today is like most days, and we just eat and talk. Haruhi is the first to peel back the layers of disquiet and start a conversation. "Hey, Kyon."

I swallow my mouthful of stir-fry. "Yeah?"

"Did you ever believe in aliens, demons, wizards, and all that other stuff when you were younger?"

I lower my bento. Haruhi's looking blankly at a beetle crawling over a blade of grass in front of her, instead of at me. She looks like she doesn't want to hear the answer. "Sure. Those, and time travelers, ghosts, secret societies, doomsday cults, the moth man, and anything else I could find in a book. It's a little embarrassing to admit, but I think I took my manga too seriously when I was a kid."

"Doomsday cults are real, even if we keep passing every one of their apocalypse dates," Haruhi says, then shakes her head. "What a waste, though. We get solid proof of one out of eight of those things, and the stupid zealots can't even end the world properly." She picks up her lunch again and nibbles at it half-heartedly. "So what made you stop believing in all that?"

"It was just time to move on, I suppose," I tell both of us. "It's not like I can get through school if I'm spending all my time running around talking to all the plants in the city trying to figure out which one is really a nature spirit in disguise."

"Tch. You just gave in like that? That's a waste, too. Besides, it's not like you're getting through school properly anyway." She looks back and studies me while she forces down a few bites, as though weighing the worthiness of my intentions on the scales of Ma'at. I must have passed, because she puts her bento down—again, looks like she doesn't have much appetite today either—and starts talking. "Hey, you know what I used to do during lunch?"

"Well, since you used to eat lunch during class after break, I guess you were probably out breaking into the principal's office to find his secret files on the students. You know, this one's a psychic mutant, that one's paying off the board of directors, a third might be an enemy spy from another high school, that sort of thing."

She flashes a single short smile, a nugget of gold peering at me out of a dried riverbed I stumbled across and likely won't find again. "Pretty close there, Kyon. I used to patrol the halls and the grounds, looking for anything interesting."

"Find anything?"

The smile sinks from her face, disappeared back into the mud. "Not really. The closest I got was this one girl who spends every lunch staring off into space…."

"And, if I guess right, you stopped your patrols the same time you stopped running out the class during breaks?"

"Yeah. I mean… I kinda fell into a pattern for where I'd search, and then one day I noticed that I was really just going around to all the most deserted parts of the school. I wasn't really looking for interesting things anymore, I was just… It was stupid, and there wasn't any point anymore. So I just started eating lunch."

I wish I hadn't asked.

Sometimes I look at someone and think, "They're missing something." It's like some crucial part of their psyche has been cut out by an expert surgeon and the psychic wound sewn up and healed over so nicely that you can't be sure what got taken out, even though you know something's gone. Purpose. Or, strength. Maybe it's the personal agreement to deal with the universe, the idea that yes, I can get up out of bed and go through another day. Whatever it is, Haruhi's missing it.

Haruhi sets down her barely-touched lunch. "Come on, let's go back to class. I'm full."

My bento's almost empty, so I guess I'm about done too. But still, back to the classroom, back to droning lectures, back to Haruhi putting her head on the desk and staring out the window… staring at where we usually eat lunch together, now that I think about it. "You sure about that? We could stay out a bit longer."

Haruhi shakes her head as she closes up her bento. "It's baking out here, I don't want to eat in this heat. I'll finish lunch during next break, or maybe you can finish my leftovers again so Mom won't bite my head off."

I shrug, and we get up and head inside. About half the time, Haruhi has me finish her bento, because her mother gets on her case when she brings lunch home uneaten. Apparently, just throwing it away is also too much of a waste.

I want to meet Haruhi's parents. I want to sit down and hear all the tales of what an unruly, ridiculous child she was. I want to see her face light up in embarrassment while she also has to listen to her parents' rendition of, I don't know, the story of how she rolled a watermelon down the stairs when she was three or whatever. This girl has to have absolutely classified stories somewhere in her past! I want to see where she eats dinner, where she lazes on the couch, where she does her chores. I want to slap her parents silly and shout at them, "Don't you see what's happening to your daughter?"

But for now, I follow Haruhi back to class.

OoOoO

Afterschool is when we do the work we can't be bothered to pay attention to in class. I'd be perfectly happy ignoring the whole lot of it, or better yet, having a textbook bonfire out on the grounds.

Haruhi responded to that by calling me too lazy to live.

Hey, I pay as much attention in class as she does!

Anyway. Once every week or so, Haruhi gets a burst of manic determination and drags me down to the school library—the first few times when she still had the energy, this madwoman _literally_ dragged me by my tie! Once in the library, we plow through a week's worth of homework in a few hours, and that's the extent of our study habits.

She seems to know everything without listening to the teachers, or she picks it up immediately with just a fast pass through the textbook. And, blessed day, she somehow managed to figure out how to explain it to me so I pick it up fairly fast, because actually reading those dense, ink-riddled, cursed doorstops posing as books and written to achieve the greatest soporific effect is simply beyond my patience. Thanks to Haruhi, I actually manage decent grades.

Today, though…

Well, she just can't keep this up.

"Oi, Haruhi."

She blinks a few times, like she's waking up. Haruhi's lucky we're sitting in a quiet library instead of trying to cross a crowded intersection. She'd never make it across like this.

"I'm paying attention! We're on math, right?"

I just point down to her book.

She makes an effort at scowling, doesn't quite pull it off. "Literature, that's what I said. That's your subject, not mine. Ugh, what's the point, anyway? It's not like all these books are going to get us anywhere." With that, she pushes her book closed and sets her head atop it.

I clasp my hands in mock prayer. "Haruhi, I beg of you, don't leave me to wade through this sea of ink alone. The unbroken miniscule print rises up to swallow me into the scholastic depths. Are you going to abandon me to this fate?"

She glares up at me before letting her head fall back into her arms on the table. Okay, so she's not in the mood to be amused right now. Deliberate silliness coming out of my mouth sounds wrong, anyway. "I told you, there's no point anyway," she mutters. "The only reason I'm doing this is so my parents don't yell at me about school. All we're doing is running around the academic spinning wheel so we can go to college and do the same thing for another four years so we get qualified to sit behind a desk and rot for the rest of our lives. No thanks."

I want argue that point, but I'm not really sure I can pull it off. It's not like I've ever seen an adult looking happy behind a desk, after all. But I still need to do something. So, I try a different tack.

"I guess it's going to be a long four years after we graduate, then. It may be boring, but I was still planning on heading to college. It beats construction work, after all. But, somewhere in the back of my head, I guess I was planning on you being there too. Maybe I'll have to drop out after all. There's not much point if I'm going alone."

Haruhi listens to my little speech, and stays still for a minute. Then, like the weight of the heavens is bearing down on her, she pushes herself upright, achingly slow. She has her "I'm frustrated, time for you to help" face on, but less angry, softer, almost… vulnerable.

"Hey, Kyon, I guess we could study, but I want something first to keep me going. Is that okay?" She slides her chair around the table, closer to me.

"Of… of course."

She almost always leads, now is no different. She leans forward in her chair, one of her hands clasping mine and her other going to my head. I cling back for everything I'm worth as she presses her lips to mine, and for a few minutes, things don't seem so bad.

By the time she pulls back, she's somehow ended up in my lap. When she moves back enough for me to see her face clearly, my head promptly drops out of the clouds—she's crying?

She turns her head again so I can't see her tears and presses it against my chest. "Hey, Kyon… I said… I said we'd study after that, but I… Let's not, not just now. I don't feel up for it."

"That's… sure. We don't have to. Tomorrow, maybe?"

She nods, face still hidden, and doesn't let go.

* * *

OoOoO

_A/N: I usually try not to say too much about anything I write, because writing ought to stand on its own, but I feel like I need to expand a little on this one. This story is going to be terribly melodramatic and you'll be hard pressed to find plot or action, but I think there will be a particular sort of person who will find this little story cathartic despite all my many weaknesses as a writer. My inner editor is telling me that this story starts in the deep end of sentimentality and only sinks and drowns from here on in, and that's part of why this story sat on my hard drive untouched or only occasionally fiddled with for so long. On the other hand, I haven't come up with a more honest way than diving into the deep end of sentimentality to tell this particular story, and it may even be a little therapeutic for those of us who spend too long keeping our faces carefully blank. (Ah, see, we're already choking on the melodrama! Off to a nice start, eh?)_

_Anywho. Several short chapters already written and just need cleanup editing. Will post them when I feel like it. The bit after those chapters still needs some work-again, will work on that when I feel like it. I wrote this primarily as a way to sort more carefully through some old baggage, a bit of a meditation on the past, so I won't be surprised if it doesn't do much for anyone else. But, if it does, yokatta ne. Ureshii yo. ^_^_


	2. Through Silence I Reach

_Disclaimer: Haruhi Suzumiya and company do not belong to me. I'm just playing, and will put them back when I'm done._

* * *

**The Melancholy of a Normal Girl**

**by Netherwood**

**Part 2 – Through Silence I Reach**

* * *

So yes, Haruhi and I are technically dating, although it didn't become obvious to me until quite some time after the fact.

Remember those "frustrations" I mentioned earlier? Well, imagine this: Haruhi and I were at lunch. We'd been eating together every lunch for… about a month at that point, I think. She hadn't completely lost her fire yet, and this was one of her energetic days, by which I mean she was pissed off at who-knows-what, so I was sitting and eating my bento and trying not to get in the way of the tiger stalking across the courtyard before me.

"Of all the stupid, most idiotic possible things… man, who made this body, anyway? I want to have a word with them!" She usually doesn't do more than seethe when she's like this, but that still wasn't a reason to ask for my face to get clawed off.

"Well, I think you know where your parents are, don't you? Have your word with them." Wait, wasn't I going to stay out of this? Damn these reflexes!

She stopped pacing, immediately turned her back to me while tapping her foot hard on the ground, then spun back around to face me so fast I don't have time to wonder how I'd annoyed her this time. She stomped over and leaned down right in front of me in a way that sent my survival instinct running for cover without stopping to see if I was following it. I wasn't, of course, mostly because I can't run fast enough to escape this predator.

"Hey, Kyon! Remember the other day when you brought that manga to school and let me borrow it?"

"The Madoka one? Yeah, what about it?"

"Why'd you bring it in the first place?"

"I just thought you'd like it."

She straightened up and glared back up at the window of our classroom like it'd done something wrong. Or possibly like I'd done something wrong, and she just didn't want to deign to glare at me. This girl makes perfect and logical sense, just like a rubik's cube that's longer on one side. "Well, I do like it! It's messed up in all the right ways. I stayed up late reading it, so you can have it back today, and if you get the next volume, I wanna borrow it."

"That should be fine. I'll pick it up this weekend."

Haruhi grabbed her head in her hands like she's fighting down the most killer headache in the world before letting go and focusing on me once again, this time so intensely I felt I was about to be snatched up and dragged away, never to be seen again. "Hey, Kyon. I'm a little frustrated with something right now. Do you think you could help me with it?"

"Sure." This was against my better judgment, by the way. I ought to at least find out what I'm agreeing to before I promise things like that.

"You've got to swallow and put your lunch down first."

I did so. "Okay, now what's going—mph!"

"Mph," by the way, is the sound made by an unwary antelope as a starving lioness pounces and mashes their lips together.

After getting the "mph" out, the antelope then thought, "She's eating me! She's eating me!" Then there's a slight pause as the antelope realized he was not in fact being eaten, despite everything he knew about how this works. After spending a long minute wondering why he's not lunch, he started to notice how soft the lioness's lips are, even if the way she was grappling him by his necktie seemed it might well leave strangulation bruises.

Then, just as he was starting to enjoy it, the lioness pulled back, blushing crimson. "That… that was really… don't expect this to be a regular occurrence, Kyon! I just needed… stuff."

"I wouldn't mind," the still-dizzy antelope unwisely snarked.

Haruhi made a face, but came and sat down next to me with a grin anyway. "You know, you're too cute for your own good." Then she got out her own bento, and ate the whole thing.

And that's pretty much how we started dating. According to her, anyway. Like I said, I wasn't really sure until much later.

OoOoO

It goes without saying that in the matter of romance, a subject on which I do not consider myself any great expert, people through the ages have made some pretty ludicrous mistakes. Consider, for example, a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh from Sumer. This sort of thing has been on my mind a lot recently.

Gilgamesh, a mortal hero, caught the eye of the goddess of heaven and earth, Inanna, and promptly received notification of her affection. What do you think you'd do if a goddess was hitting on you? Gilgamesh, not being the sharpest hero ever, laughed at her and told her to take a hike. He described her as a brazier that goes out in the cold, a backdoor that lets in the storm, a fortress that falls on its own garrison, and a sandal that trips the foot. He pointed out that she went through lovers like cheap fast food and then tossed them aside like spent wrappers. Of course, citing evidence to support your claims is important in any debate, so he listed all her previous lovers and how they came out miserable just for knowing her. Which of your shepherds, O Inanna, have you loved forever?

Now, I realize this modern proverb was well after his time, but even Gilgamesh should have known that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Inanna threw a tantrum, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that things didn't turn out well for him.

Even though everything he said to Inanna was true.

I, however, have Gilgamesh beat, hands down.

OoOoO

So, if we only study once a week or so, what happens after school on the other days? Just like lunch, we kind of danced around it for awhile. Then, about a week or two before our antelope-lioness reenactment, we settled into a pattern that worked for us. I think she was hanging around afterschool because she didn't want to go home; I didn't have a club to go to, but I started lingering to see what she was doing. I really don't remember who said something first, but we ended up walking home together one day as far our routes matched, and then we stopped to get a snack. Pretty soon, we were spending two or three hours every day just walking around town.

We visit cafes, go to an occasional movie, walk around the park, grab some manga at the bookstore or listen to CDs at the music store. We look to all the world like a typical couple. I guess I usually pay for food or whatever, since most of the time it's me saying, "Hey, want to go eat over there?" to make things last a little longer.

All this reminiscing, thinking about our first kiss and how we got into this pattern… honestly, I miss how she used to act. After that impromptu library kiss on the day we didn't do our homework, we said we'd take care of it "tomorrow." But, that was several days ago, and we still haven't budged.

Now, as a general rule I don't mind skipping homework, but not if it's just because we can't bring ourselves to care about it.

We kept putting it off, wandering bonelessly around town. Today, we're in a park, side by side on a bench. We come here often. The trees provide plentiful shade in hot weather, the back trails are secluded when Haruhi doesn't want to deal with a crowd, and a canal runs through the center of the park, right in front of our bench. I know it's just a human-made bit of irrigation, but that canal still comes and goes as freely as any river, and its hushed rushing of water draws me in and out of reverie, thinking about the past and the present and the future.

"Hey, Haruhi."

"Mm?"

"What are you thinking about?"

Beside me, she's propped up with her elbows on her knees, leaning so far toward the creek that I can't see her face. "Eh, nothing really. Just… drifting."

"That must be nice."

"…Not really."

It was on this very spot before the canal that I finally got the backbone to make a bad joke about our strange afterschool habits, about two weeks ago: "You know, Haruhi, I've heard that by the third date you have to tell a guy whether or not you're going steady. I've been paying your dinner tab for who knows how many dates now, and I'm still waiting in agony here!"

She actually got outright pissed at that, but not for the reason I thought she would. "What do you mean, idiot? We make out sometimes, don't we? That's a lot farther than I've gone with any of the other boys I dated! Of course we're going steady."

Of course, this has got to be the most unconventional relationship ever. If us tromping around after school does in fact count as dates, they feel more like pity dates. But which of us is being pitied? Excellent question. "Well, it's not like you ever said anything. As far as I knew, the kissing was just because…"

Actually, how to end that sentence without being immediately decapitated?

She scowled. "Just because _what_, Kyon?"

Because I don't know what to expect from you. Because one day you're yelling about how stupid I am and the next day you imperiously demand I sate your lusts, and that's when you don't just shut down instead. Because I'm not sure about what you really think about me, let alone whether you want to date me. Am I your boyfriend, or just a bandage? And do I care if I'm the wrong one?

I didn't say any of that, of course.

She sighed, the scowl dropped off her face, and she visibly slumped. "Never mind, Kyon, I was kind of weird about it. Just… you've lasted longer than any other boy I've dated, okay? Way longer. Don't screw it up now."

Every once in awhile, her eyes reveal a glint of the old, commandeering, no-bullshit-unless-you're-worth-my-time Haruhi, but it never lasts very long.

But today… today, still sitting side by side, both our gazes caught by the stray leaves fallen in the river yet never looking up to each other... Why? Why does this have to be so hard? I know what I feel for her. The urge to just reach out and tear through the disquiet and wrap my arms around her—

—ah, but look at me, going on like that. If I keep this up, I'm going to start sounding like… well, like something pathetic, I'm sure.

Beside me, Haruhi stares into the water rushing past us.

OoOoO

If I were sane, I would've ran as soon as I realized I was in love with this girl. As a close second in sanity, I could have convinced her to put up with Taniguchi and Kunikida and whoever else I could grab. Pretend for a moment that we live in an alternate universe where Haruhi is willing to make non-Kyon friends; she would have much more support that way, and I wouldn't be drowning with her.

As I said, I have Gilgamesh beaten. Can you see it now?

The only claim to stupidity Gilgamesh has is that he spent a few minutes shooting his mouth off instead of a few minutes thinking. I've had plenty of time to reflect on my own stupidity, months by now, but due to a malfunctioning sense of self-preservation, I persist. I'm trying to scale a perfectly smooth wall with spikes at the top and bottom when the door is _right there_.

I had plenty of chances to just back up and leave before Haruhi and I got deeply involved. If she had started slipping just a bit earlier, if she had already been a sorry wreck by the time school began and we met, then I would have seen nothing more than another quiet, moody girl. Perhaps a moody girl I could respect for being so honest in this age of bright colors and forced smiles, but someone mostly uninteresting regardless. She waited, though. She showed me what she could be, unusual and strange and proud and running against the crowd and telling everyone that she has no interest in the dull lives of humanity at large. Her introduction in class was the first time in a long time that I sat up and thought, this looks interesting. She was tantalizing, and I was tempted. Was this how Adam felt as he took the forbidden fruit Eve offered him?

And, even in her wreckage, I don't dare look away.

The moment passes. We stand up, we leave the park, and we say nothing that matters.

OoOoO

Like she's rocket-propelled, my little sister launches into me as I try to push through the door home. I barely stop us from falling back onto the porch. "Kyon is home, Kyon is home, Kyon is home!"

Can we not do this right now? Please? Maybe later?

"But Kyon is home!" My sister clamps her arms around my stomach like I'm going to disappear. "Why do you always come home so late?"

Because I'm stupid, obviously. That's the only proper description for basically everything I do lately. "Never mind that. Could you let go? I don't want to stand on the porch."

She pouts, and removes the vice around my body. But before I can budge, she grabs my arm instead and tugs me inside. "Mom bought me a new Trope-tan plushie today! She said it's 'cause I was so good last week when Dad was in Hokkaido! Wanna see it?"

Dad went to Hokkaido? Another business trip, I guess. I… really hadn't noticed. He's usually home from work late anyway, and lately I just head up to my room when I get back from meandering with Haruhi.

"Can I look at it later? I'm really tired now." She keeps trying to yank me toward the living room, I guess that's where her toy is. With our sizes, it's a bit like a kitten gnawing on a Doberman. I just keep walking toward the stairs and my room. I stop briefly near the kitchen, deciding whether I'm hungry—the reply from my stomach is a resounding yes, but I doubt my sister will let me rest long enough for a quick bite. Besides, Mom and Dad are talking at the kitchen table. I'm not sure I'm up for any sort of conversation right now, so I just keep walking.

"Kyoooon! You never play with me anymore!" She sits on the stairs, making me drag her up step by step. Why does she have to do this? I'm exhausted. It's not the kind of exhaustion that lets you hit the pillow and fall asleep right away, either. I'm just… worn out. My bones ache like someone took sandpaper to every joint in my body, and I can't even figure out what I've done to be this sore. If I do anything with my sister now, it'll end with me balled up on the floor while she gleefully jumps on my spine.

Despite the unforgivable imbalance of energy between us, I still manage to pry her off once I get to the door to my room. I set her upright, my hands on her shoulders to keep her from rushing me again. "Nonoko, look. I've had a long day, and I'm ready to crash. I'll look at your new toy some other time, but for now, could you just let me have some quiet?"

Her stuck-out pouty lip says she doesn't think much of that. I half-expect her to stamp her little foot before charging forward to wreak justice on me with her tiny fists, but instead she spins around and goes down the stairs, using that stomp-jump peculiar to children where both feet hit every single step at the same time, rattling the house and letting everyone know how overjoyed she is.

It's entirely possible one of my parents might come up to find out what caused the tantrum, but for now I just sigh with relief, ditch my bag, and fall onto bed after making sure my door is closed against further prying by little sisters.

My thoughts, of course, drift back to Haruhi. I'd like to say I'm coming up with great ideas to draw her out of her shell and jumpstart her spirits again. I'd like to say I have some sort of plan of action at all. I'd even like to say I just understand some small measure of what's going through her mind.

But, really, all I can say is that I'm sitting here in a haze, my thoughts rolling about. Haruhi tapping the back of my chair in the middle of class, the only sign that she's still alive. Her dulled eyes, belonging to someone else, someone who has lost interest. But also, her smirk, and a spark of fire as if heaven instilled her with the breathe of life once again. Her hand on my cheek as her face draws close to mine, hardly the only time she still resonates with excitement...

My door shifts, and my little sister's head nudges in through the widening crack. I don't stop to think, I just push myself up and shout, "Nonoko, will you just _leave me alone!_"

She squeaks in surprise, and darts inside my room just long enough to set down a glass of milk and a sandwich on a plate. She dips in her best elementary-school attempt at a formal bow, as though apologizing. "Get better soon, Kyon!"

I'm left staring at the unexpected meal on the middle of the floor, listening to her dash down the hall back to her own room. The milk sloughs about in its glass from all the movement. From here, the sandwich looks like cheese and... is that turkey? All sliced meat looks the same. Did my little sister notice that I stopped at the kitchen earlier while she was hanging on my arm, hoping to spend fifteen minutes with me? Did she guess how hungry I was?

All that's left to do is bury my head in my hands and groan at my own stupidity.

* * *

OoOoO

_A/N: There is an adorable scene in which Kyon's little sister goes into the kitchen, Mom/Dad ask why she's so mad, and she keeps insisting she isn't while she clearly is. Eventually they ask what she's doing, because she's kind of making a mess, and she says she's making Kyon a sandwich because he's hungry, and then she dashes out the room again with plate of sandwich and spill-threatening glass of milk held high. (But that scene can't exist in Kyon's point of view, so it'll never be written. :P)_


	3. Nadir

_Disclaimer: Haruhi Suzumiya and company do not belong to me. I'm just playing, and will put them back when I'm done._

* * *

**The Melancholy of a Normal Girl**

**by Netherwood**

**Part 3 – Nadir**

* * *

Today, we're at the library. Not the school library for homework; I keep thinking that if I try to drag her back there again, she'll want nothing to do with any of it. We're at the public library, for browsing. Outside, every flood myth ever told has descended upon us, making the park a bit less attractive. I can hear the rain hitting the roof, a cascade beating against the silence. We've been getting a lot of rain lately. If this keeps up, the oncoming autumn is going to be dreary indeed. On top of that, we already went to a movie yesterday, and we're not hungry yet, so the library it is.

How long has it been since that day when we kissed and put off our homework and I wished I knew how to make it better while Haruhi cried? Was that last week, or the week before? I can hardly remember anything anymore. The fight with my sister, and just about everything else since then blends together. Time has a funny way of doing that lately.

Haruhi, of course, raided the supernatural section of the library as soon as we got here and built a fortress of books at a study table; last time I wandered over by her, she was intent on reading about the moth man and other cryptids. I'm over in the stacks, keeping an eye on Haruhi while standing in the psychology section trying to decide whether these things are books or bricks.

I once heard a lecturer make a case that Freud, Jung, and all those early pioneers of modern psychology got as far as they did by basically treating dreams and literature as the same thing, and the patient they were studying as a literary text. I barely even know what that means, but I'm certain the most I've heard about Freud and Jung was from literature teachers talking about _Lolita_ and _Heart of Darkness_. So, I guess I can throw out everything I've ever heard about egos and archetypes if I actually want to read about psychology. And the more modern texts, bearing such titles as _Application of Pathological Psychology in Treatment_, are written above my level. Text that miniscule cannot be good for the health of high school students. I'm not even sure what I was hoping to find in these tomes.

Remember how I mentioned looking at someone and thinking they're missing something, like some crucial part of their psyche has just been cut out? For the record, it's worse when you can feel, with absolute certainty, that same gap in your own mind. Like déjà vu. You know you've been here and done this before as certain as you remember getting up this morning, but you can't quite figure out when. Or you know you've met someone before, but they're really a complete stranger.

Like, a chestnut-haired beauty of an upperclassman who looks younger than me, but still has a figure liable to set every male in the school to killing each other for the privilege of sharing a hallway with her. Every now and then, I see her putting up calligraphy club posters with a slightly vacant, but oh-so-sweet smile on her radiant face.

Or, an athletic-looking transfer student prettyboy I see in the halls at school now and then. He's occasionally seen standing in funny corners and hallways during breaks, when he manages to give the slip to the crowd of admiring girls he seems to attract, and he always has the same expression that I can only call polite and agreeable and very, very deliberate.

Or, the short, lavender-haired girl with a perfectly blank expression, still in her school uniform, standing over there by the doors of the library right now and watching the room without seeming to focus on anything.

I should know them. I don't like to talk as though the universe is trying to send me messages; I gave up that sort of belief along with all the rest of my wishful thinking at the end of middle school. But this time, the universe really is trying to tell me something, or the Illuminati are following me, or something. I see these three people all the time at school, and every single time, it's like there's some voice shouting in my ear: "Don't you know them, idiot? How could you forget?" And why, in my head, does that voice sound like Haruhi?

Or, maybe I need to be locked in a psychiatric ward until the paranoia goes away?

The lavender-haired girl turns her head and looks right at me. Across the wide reading room, camouflaged in the middle of a crowd, and mostly concealed by a bookshelf as I am, she still homes in on me like a seeker missile. She blinks once, and still shows no emotion. No human has a face that cold.

No. I'm not crazy. Something's up.

"Hey, Haruhi, look at that girl over there, the one with purple hair, but don't make it obvious you're looking. Does she seem familiar?"

Haruhi, slumped over her book, bends her head up just far enough to glare at me from her paper fortress and launch her counterattack. "What do I care about some bookworm?"

Sigh. Haruhi, I know I'm the first and only human being you've bothered having a real conversation with in our class, and I'll likely retain that dubious honor for the rest of the year. But could you take some time to at least admit the existence of other, non-Kyon and non-Haruhi people? "Hey, could you just look? I think she might be following us or something."

Haruhi's face, if possible, sours even more. What's with that? Getting stalked by some shadowy organization with nefarious purposes—that's the sort of thing that would excite this girl, isn't it?

"Sorry, don't recognize her."

Hey. You barely looked. Do you have the vision of Superman, or can you just not be bothered to even humor me?

The tightness around her eyes and the angry line of her lips, as they always do lately, lose what little fight they have, and she squeezes her eyes shut in exhaustion like she's been getting as much sleep as me lately. "Look, Kyon. I know what you're trying to do, but just… don't, okay? It won't help."

Doing what? I see a creepy emotionless girl following us around, and you accuse me of being up to something? That's real nice.

Haruhi pushes herself heavily to her feet, takes one book, and thoughtfully leaves the other five stacks for the librarians to clean up. I catch a glimpse of the title of the sole book which is apparently worthy of accompanying her, titled _House__ of Leaves_. "This place really tanks," she says. "Let's find someplace else."

We work our way through the checkout line. As we leave, Haruhi keeps flipping through her book, eyes down. And I—I can't work up the bravery to stare back, but I still keep an eye on the smaller lavender-haired girl who stands inert by the doors we leave through. The sterile gaze of our mystery girl tracks me and Haruhi the whole way, probably long after we leave the building.

OoOoO

The rain is still flooding out the whole earth when we emerge from the library in the late evening; every human being on the planet is sensibly indoors, so only Haruhi and I remain in this darkened world. Haruhi tucks her book inside her coat, and we start walking.

Am I bad person for wishing that we could stay exactly like this until the end of time? Out in the rain, we don't need to speak. For now, the air is more cool than cold. The halos of the street lamps are small and wavering, and serve only to mark where the rain turns from a single mysterious mass into a thousand streaks of crystal beneath the light. The endless rain falling from a vast sky comes to rest on our little street as a continuous symphony: _shaaaaaaa_. Even the air itself is a clean sweetness that curls around my tongue with every breathe. Every once in awhile, as we pass through the pools of light, Haruhi looks to me and smiles to let me know that she feels as burdenless as I do out here. I don't know what to say to this girl, and it seems I never do, but as we walk down a rainy street that shuts out the world, it doesn't really matter.

We're not heading back to either of our houses, we're not splitting up, and we don't seem to have our next destination yet. We keep walking, mostly keeping to areas with overhangs or covered walkways or overpasses, but sometimes just throwing our hoods on and plodding through the eternal storm for awhile. Haruhi's leading, and doesn't seem to know where we're going. I'm following, and I certainly don't care, as long as we take our time getting there.

And yet... in the back of my head, I know that silent smiles in the rain won't last, and they won't change anything.

Why is it so hard to find the right words?

Haruhi finally picks a covered parking garage and tromps past the empty meter booth. The hypnotic spell of a world without human speech is finally broken when Haruhi beckons me in. "Hey, let's stop here for a bit."

She sits down where she can still see the street beyond the entrance, and takes out her library book from her coat. I sigh, and sit next to her. Whether it's because we stopped or because my coat is wet now, the chill starts to seep down my neck and up my sleeves. The gutters outside are practically overflowing, dark water swirling down the streets and trying to flood. The drain system is barely handling the load, and if the rain was just a bit heavier and the water just a bit higher, we would have a river instead of something more suited to cars. Perhaps we could call it Lethe and forget why we're out here wandering.

"Hey, Haruhi. I just thought of something."

She looks up from her book. Try not to have such a cautious look on your face there, Haruhi. It makes me feel scary, and that is a weird feeling indeed.

"You say you want to find aliens and all that, right? If you really want to find them, maybe we should go looking for them properly."

She drops her head back to her book. "Kyon… don't."

"Next time we go on a date, we could do double duty and keep an eye out for unusual things. Just cover as much ground as we can, poke through some of the out-of-the-way places. Who knows, we might find a chupacabra on vacation from Mexico lurking in some back alley."

Haruhi pulls her knees up to her chest. "Kyon, cut it out."

What, doesn't that sound like a fun idea? I thought you might seize on it like a dog with a juicy steak: firmly, happily, and in total disregard of the rest of the world. "Well, I'm sure that's what it'll take if you really want to find something. It's not like vampires make the daily news, after all."

Fast reflexes keep me from harm, but her library book still bounces off the wall next to my head and goes sliding across the pavement, scattering stray rocks. What the hell!

Her breath comes in ragged spurts; she's obviously trying not to cry. I keep still, sprawled out on all fours, hoping. Then she starts shouting.

"It's not real, Kyon! None of it! Is that what you wanted to hear? We could walk every inch of this city and shove our noses into everyone's business and never find anything extraordinary! If time travel exists, every history book would be a bunch of tangled, stupid anachronisms. If espers exist, we would have people with latent psychic powers popping up all over and making all sorts of crap happen before they get their powers under control. If aliens exist, well, this whole damn planet is boring, and they don't have any reason to come here!"

I get back to my feet and, with Haruhi glowering at me and her chest still heaving from her ragged breathing, pick up her book. Most of the pages are bent, the back cover's scratched, and it looks like a few rocks got lodged inside the plastic cover. I hold it out to her, and she snatches it back.

"I just thought you'd have fun," I tell her. "That's all I meant."

She stares at me in pure terror, before scrambling to her feet and charging headlong into the rain.

OoOoO

Her foot hits the road, sending a cascade of raindrops up to the sky before being swallowed back into the river. She runs from me.

I still don't understand exactly how I managed to piss her off this badly. I thought we were having a nice evening here. No, I'm sure of it; she was feeling as happy as I was, for a little while. It's not often that either of us smile that much.

She pushes off from the ground. Despite everything, this girl is still blessed with more athletic ability than the entire track team, and seems to hang in the air as though she can't be bothered to come down to the rest of us.

We still have school tomorrow. If I stand here and watch her disappear into the night, will she be there tomorrow, sitting behind me as usual? If she is, will she reach out and tap the back of my chair to let me know she's awake, like she always does? Or will she never want to look at me again? I don't know how to fix this, and it would be so easy to go back to doing my homework, and coming home after school, and sleeping at night without staring at the ceiling.

...you know, I'm not actually sure what she meant by tapping my chair all that time. I never asked her.

Her other foot ploughs into the river as she finally lands. Her hair and her loosened hood whip behind her, ribbons threatening to tear loose.

I remember watching an interview with a mythologist, talking about the states of mind we live in. He mentioned a time where the difference between you and another person can be completely erased, where a single person can become, for an instant, the only important thing in the universe, where all you can think is, _That person must not fall. I must not let that person fall._ I've felt the swell of dark water threatening to drown us both. I've looked up at the stars, and felt them gazing back uncaring. There's so much I don't understand about Haruhi. I don't understand why she's so broken. I don't understand how to fix it. But I think I know how it feels.

She pushes off the ground once again. Time snaps back into place, my mind reconnects with my body, and I bolt after her.

* * *

OoOoO

_A/N: __Shaaaaaaa_


	4. Rainy Day Man

_Disclaimer: Haruhi Suzumiya and company do not belong to me. I'm just playing, and will put them back when I'm done._

* * *

**The Melancholy of a Normal Girl**

**by Netherwood**

**Part 4 –Rainy Day Man**

* * *

"Haruhi!"

Cold water sucks at my feet. She's faster than me, but the sheets of rain never quite swallow her. Light? The world seems lighter than it just did, like the boldest moon the world has ever seen is sitting behind those clouds, its rays diffusing through the rain to permeate the entire city in eerie gray light. Maybe my panic has made my eyes sharper?

"Haruhi, wait!"

There's a stitch in my side, burning, begging me to slow down, but I can't. Ahead, Haruhi still pounds on through the rain and river and gray light like she'll never stop, never let herself be caught. Who can blame her?

I barely see where we're going, my eyes strained enough just fighting through the rain to keep Haruhi in my sight, but we leave the street and the buildings fall away around us, crumbling into the night. What is this? Wide empty space, and nothing to fill it—we're in the park again. Twenty paces ahead of me, thirty paces ahead, I can barely see her. The canal is ahead of us, isn't it? The canal is somewhere in the haze ahead of us, with its waters swollen from the rain. I can hear it, rushing, hungry and angry—or is that my imagination? Are we close? I don't know where we are.

Just when she's ready to pull away, just when I feel ready to give out, just when the cloak of rain seems ready to close around Haruhi and smudge out her already indistinct form, the path changes. The loud clomp of Haruhi's feet hitting wooden planks rises above the sounds of rain, and Haruhi herself shouts in surprise as she runs onto a bridge over the water.

She stops, finally, blessedly, right in the middle of the wide bridge and clings to the railing like a lifeline. I pull up to a stop next to her gasping for air, not quite within reach of her. "What... what was... that?" It's all I can gasp out, all I can think of while I desperately try to catch my breath in the bitterly cold air.

She stares wide-eyed below into the churning canal and its swollen waters that threaten to flood, her hands trembling on the rails. "I... didn't know this was here." For all that she's almost whispering the words, they're perfectly clear and sharp over the sound of rain and running water. "A bridge? Where... where are we?"

"Forget that. What was that about?" I reach forward to grab her without thinking. She notices at the last second and tears her eyes away from the river to knock my hand away before taking a step back.

We stare at each other, need and terror and confusion, just a pair of idiots.

She's the one who finally breaks the silence. Of course she is. She's always the bolder. "Do you hate me now, Kyon?"

"What?"

She gives me a twisted grin that barely holds together. "Do you hate me?"

"No! Why should I?"

"You must really hate me. Here I am, the weird girl. You can't hang out with your friends because of me, you can't do your homework, you get stuck in the rain. I cry on you, I bite your head off, I get so damn tired you have to drag my ass around, or I drag your ass around and don't let you have a life on your own. You should hate me."

"Well I don't, and you aren't like that at all." Is that what she thinks of herself? This crazy girl is wrong from start to finish.

"Oh, don't think I don't know damn well how fucked up I am, Kyon. So why do you let me do this to you?"

"I'm your boyfriend, aren't I? That's kinda my job." Stupid things are coming out my mouth, and I hate myself for not knowing how to explain this addiction to her. How can I possibly explain how the first time I saw her, her eyes flashed with light that struck out against the world? How to explain that I want to see her walking with steps that make the earth tremble once again? "Honestly, I thought it was the other way around when you ran off like that. I thought I'd finally said something that meant you weren't going to put up with me anymore. Apparently you don't hate me, so that's good. Can we maybe drop that line of thought, then?"

"I... don't... I..." She trails off looking utterly confused, and I get a twisted little thrill at finally being the one who isn't tongue-tied. "God damn it, Kyon! I thought I just fucked up the one really good thing in my life, and all you can say about it is 'don't worry about it'? What the hell is wrong with you? I don't even know why you're still here. I'm tempted to say it's because you like it when I stick my tongue down your throat, but even I can't be that great a kisser. Not enough to make up for all this. I just screamed at you and threw a book at your head and you brush it off? Why the hell do you put up with me?"

I can understand the sentiment, only in reverse. Why should she even notice my existence? There's nothing interesting or important or useful about me. I'm not lively, I never know what to say or how to say it, and I can't do anything at all. And yet, when we walk to school every day, Haruhi still keeps turning her head to look at me as though checking to make sure I'm still there. "Let me ask you something first. Why don't you hate me? Why do you keep me around?"

Haruhi's voice loses its heat almost immediately. "That's... kind of a long story."

I just shrug. It's not as if we have anywhere to be.

Apparently I did something right, because she lets out something halfway between a sigh and an annoyed little huff, and suddenly our standoff ends. She grabs my hand and leads me off the bridge. We find a covered walkway in the park grounds and sit just out of the rain, with the gray light filling up the rain around us. I sit as close to her as I dare without setting her off again.

"Hey, Kyon. You ever get the feeling, when you're in a crowd, you're in danger somehow?"

"I think everyone's felt something like that at least once in their lives. I mean, being in the middle of a bunch of people you don't know can be pretty disorienting."

She shakes her head. "Not just that. More like, when you're with other people, you feel like everyone's trying to pull you apart and eat you alive, just by being there and being so many people at once..."

Whatever it is she's trying to say, it isn't easy. She isn't even looking at me, and for a moment she seems to collapse, drawing her legs up to her chest and hugging herself. It may be the most un-Haruhi thing I've seen her do. I wisely keep my mouth shut and let her keep going.

"I get that all the time, ever since I was a kid. It started when... well, I was at a baseball game, not that the specifics matter, and I realized just how many people there are in the world. An enormous stadium, jam packed, and a little bit of math told that was only a fraction of the people in Japan. How many people were there who would never care, or even know, if I lived or died? Every time I got out of bed, I was just doing the same stupid, simple things everyone else did every day. It got worse as I got older. Now, I can barely stand to be in the same classroom as all the other people without thinking about it. Are they doing anything with their lives? Is there a goddamn point to it? I was only in elementary school, and I already figured out that the world would keep going if I dropped dead right there. I keep thinking I need to do something extraordinary, I need to find something fantastic, I need to find a big freaking sign floating in the sky that says, 'Yes, Haruhi, you're here for a reason. Signed, the Universe.' I spent years trying to find that sign."

I couldn't help but jump. "People would notice if you disappeared. Our classmates, our teachers, your parents. I would."

"Mom barely even knows me. Dad's gone." She laughed. "Mom'd be better off without me, too. The shit I give her... That sign isn't coming. In a hundred years, I'll be dead just like everyone else. Humans don't get grand destinies, we just tell stories about nonsense like aliens and magic. I was just going to be another little girl that probably slashes her wrists or downs a bottle of sleeping pills before she even gets to graduate. No one would notice. No one would care. And then... you showed up."

She finally turns her head from the rain, though, and rests the side of her head against her arms and knees. She looks at me with warm eyes through the hair plastered against her face. "I thought you were like me at first, you know that Kyon? You didn't waste your time talking about stupid things like that show the other night or the score on some baseball game. Yeah, you'll eat lunch with whoever comes and sits with you, but you never seemed to worry about things like, 'Oh, I have to be seen talking with him, the other guy, and her, or else my social life is destroyed!' You didn't buy into the same crap everyone else does. You kept your eyes open, you paid attention, you noticed things that people just don't notice. Like my hair, remember?"

"Worn loose on Monday, a ponytail on Tuesday, and adding one more tie every day, matching the colors of the kanji for the day, and resetting every week," I said, remembering. "For the aliens. Until you cut it, anyway."

A tiny smile sneaks across her face. "Exactly! You were the only person I'd ever met who paid attention long enough to notice little things like that. So, I thought that you must be looking out for unusual things, too. I started talking to you, thinking maybe you might find something I couldn't. At the least, you came up with interesting things to talk about, unlike the rest of the class. You were... you were like this wise sage, you know? Some Zen master, perfectly serene, perfectly aware. You mattered, and I kept thinking you were going to... I don't know, take me down some rabbit hole to an insane world better than this one. Or just keep talking to me, at least."

"I'm hardly a Buddha of anything, let alone a guide to Wonderland."

"Hmph, maybe. Actually yeah, I'd say you screwed that image up pretty well. It only took about thirty seconds, too. You asked me about all the clubs I was going to, wondering if I'd found any good ones. Do you remember that?"

I search through my memory for a minute, but nothing comes up. I reluctantly shake my head.

"Typical. Everything came tumbling down, and you don't even remember what you said. You noticed I'd been going to a different afterschool club every day, and asked me if there were any interesting ones. I said there weren't, and complained that no one was trying to do anything extraordinary."

Ah. Actually, now that I think about it, this is starting to sound familiar.

"Do you remember what you said to that, Kyon? And I quote, 'Extraordinary things stand out, exactly because they're so extraordinary. If you've looked this long and haven't found anything interesting—maybe even if you only took one look and didn't see anything—perhaps there's just nothing to find,' end of moronic quote."

And, after I said those fateful words, she stared at me for a few seconds, slumped down onto her desk, and put her head in her arms. Yes, I definitely remember this now. As soon as the words left my mouth, I had this overwhelming feeling that the words were wrong, that there was something else I was meant to say right then, and I had somehow failed.

Come to think of it, that was the moment when our downward spirals, slow and gradual but already melancholic at the time, took a genuine nosedive. And here we are.

"I was so pissed! I think I hated you for awhile. Right then I realized, without a doubt, that you were just another idiot who had decided to give in and die slowly, living a normal, pointless little life. But it was worse, because you knew how pointless it was. But did you care? Not even a bit. You didn't have enough fight left to care. And that was worse, because it was _you_." She looks up, and locks eyes with me, and smiles, just for me. "I wanted to prove you wrong somehow. I wanted you to go away, so I wouldn't have to be happy about having an idiot like you around. I wanted a lot of things. But, I ended up deciding... not having you around just wasn't worth it, even if you were an idiot. Being alone just hurt too much."

Haruhi falls silent. She keeps watching me, though, and I realize that her stare is telling me that it's my turn for the gut-spilling. She asked me a question, after all, and I still owe her an answer.

Let's not mess this up, eh?

"I was wrong when I said extraordinary things stick out," I start. "It's just that most people don't go looking for them. When they see them, though, it's like the touch of spice that makes the dish. Why do you think everyone in our school knows about the hieroglyphics you scrawled out on the field at your middle school, or the time you moved all the desks to the hall, or how you went to every club for just one day? It's strange, and they don't understand it, but it's something to give a little bit of wonder to the world."

"I'm pretty sure that sort of thing does stand out," she countered. "After all, everyone knows about it, but hardly anyone had to go looking for it."

She chooses now to logically take things apart? This is Sasaki all over again. Oh, to hell with whether other people see it or not. "Well, maybe, but they don't really get what you're trying to do. For them it's maybe just antics. Interesting and fun, sure, but they don't get it. When I first met you, though, your eyes—ah, I mean, the way you walked, er, it carried your spirit..." Damn it, my brain chooses to rebel now? Traitorous scum! Haruhi's looking at me as though my head's been screwed on backwards.

I take a deep breath and try again. "You dare." I jab my finger at her, hoping to barrel past my weak start. "You're the only person who could possibly do things the way you do them. No one else could have stood up in class and demanded that espers, aliens, time travelers, and sliders come meet you. No one else can challenge the world just by existing. I think everyone knows somewhere deep down that life is half about just spinning our wheels in the mud, but you're the only who gets pissed off about that. You're the only one who dares to demand every last drop of juice out of life, and you're the only one who dares to go get it yourself, whether you have to fight or steal. Your only problem now is you don't know where to go to grab it."

"Kyon..." She's looking at me funny, but I'm rambling and not about to stop now.

"I mean, look at me! I don't know about me seeing more than anyone else like you say I do, but let's go with that for argument, okay? What do I do with my sight? Not much. I watch. I still mostly just coast through life. But you! You stood up behind me on the first day of class, and I knew right then that you make life extraordinary wherever you go. I don't care if there aren't... secret conspiracies and alien observers and time travelers having shadow wars around you. You're hungry. No matter what, you dare to reach higher, and that makes you the very best of us."

Haruhi's hand twitches toward me, like she wants to reach out, but instead she runs it through her hair. "I've looked, Kyon. I've looked for so damn long. You're just about the only thing I found."

"And I found you. Isn't that enough for a little while? And doesn't it seem ridiculous that there should only be one worthwhile thing in the entire world? If we already found one thing, doesn't that mean there's probably so many more reasons out there? So we keep our eyes open. We climb trees, we read dusty books, we go walking in the rain at night, we take shortcuts just to see what's there. We don't have to do it alone, either. I know Taniguchi and Kunikida love hearing about all the insane things stunts you used to pull, because they sit up when something out of the ordinary comes barging through the door. My parents are probably wondering what my girlfriend is like, and I think it's about time I had you over for dinner sometime to show them. My little sister, too—I want to introduce you to my little sister, because I know she would love you. We won't find trolls or vampires, and we'll probably end up going to college and getting jobs, but it might turn out worth it. Even if it makes no sense, I'll stick with you if you if you'll do the same for me."

I stretch out my hand.

She hesitates for a minute. Then she moves in, but instead of just grabbing my hand, she wraps her arms around my neck and holds on with everything she has. I slide my arms around her waist in return, our large coats making it feel like we've fallen into a pile of cushions and each other. "You sage." She sounds like she's fighting back both tears and laughter at the same time. "You idiotic sage."

Wait a minute. I opened my mouth, didn't I? I opened my mouth, and things came out. Now how did that happen? I can't help but smile as we cling to each other.

That lasts until Haruhi lets out an enormous sneeze, jerking against me with the force of it. We stare at each other for a few seconds before we start laughing.

"We... we just ran a marathon in the rain, didn't we?" I say.

"Mmm, we're soaked as hell," she agrees. "Warm showers and dry clothes for us both or we'll be miserable tomorrow."

And, somehow, life goes on.

* * *

OoOoO


End file.
